


I Am Death

by Ephemerald



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26710198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ephemerald/pseuds/Ephemerald
Summary: A human falls down Mt. Ebott, heedless of the warnings.
Kudos: 7





	I Am Death

The legends say that those who climb Mt. Ebott never return. This simple fact, and all of its connotations, spread like wildfire through the generations. Adults caught in the throes of their daily lives would sometimes find a moment or two to glance at the mountain. But the children... Their imaginations ran wild, devising all sorts of tall tales. 

Some thought that the monsters had died out years ago, and beasts far worse than them scavenged the underground. Some suspected the entire area had become overgrown with weeds and vines and sickly wildlife. There were hushed whispers and ghost stories. A friend had a friend who had a brother who knew a teacher whose cousin had strayed too close. Bullies dared the innocent and naive to walk up the mountain path. A class clown swore up and down he saw lights coming from the peak, late at night. When planes passed overhead, they shimmered like mirages. 

The city’s therapists regularly combatted clients who had nightmares of hearing the mountain’s breath. It felt alive, they said. Determined to break free of its shackles. It had been sealed away years and years ago, but the earth refused to die. Humankind seemed to collectively, instinctively, know the truth — that the civilization of monsters was fending for itself, plotting to reach the surface one way or another. They would grind tons of stone into dust if they had to. They would breach the core of the earth if its power would thrust them upwards. 

And still, there were hushed whispers and ghost stories. People saw hordes of golden flowers emerge on the mountainside and die within a week. Knives turned up missing. On the event that a transfer student stumbled into a new school, they invariably stared at the mountain in lieu of anything else. They said it was smiling at them. Some believed it never rained or snowed at the peak, that any precipitation just blew away in the howling wind. The wind that sounded like it was barking commands at anyone it passed through.

All of this and more passed through the human’s head as it tumbled erratically through the deadened air of the vertical drop. In this purgatory that divided the mortal world and the crucible, they had nothing but their thoughts. Those, and the wind. The wind was howling. How could it not? It summoned itself in response to the human’s fall, whistling and whipping around and biting at their limbs, pushing them further down. The human’s eyes were glued shut; they saw nothing of the encroaching rock, nor the makeshift garden that was fated to stop their fall. In spite of this, their soul felt like it already knew what destination awaited it, like it had made its peace with the prospect of a life spent underground.

Yes. A life. There was no possible way to escape this place, not without some incomprehensible power. The human had no idea. The legends of old contained precious few nuggets of information, serving more as grim reminders than anything. A fable with a lesson — one that had been mindlessly ignored.

THUD…?

Miraculously, the human was virtually unharmed. There was no sickening crunch, no feeling of bones snapping against cold, inviolate rock. More like a million tiny arms softly caught the human’s body and lowered them down to their own level. Not a completely pleasant fall, mind you, but one that was successfully broken. After making absolutely sure that this lack of feeling wasn’t some errant adrenaline rush and that they weren’t in mortal terror, the human opened their eyes. They stumbled to their feet, dusting off their pants. They rubbed at the bandage on their sore kneecap. (That was a prior injury.) They saw a stick, snapped in half — it must have fallen along with them. They picked it up. Swung it a couple of times. They pocketed it, storing it in some unseen crevice.

The chamber the human had fallen into was covered in nigh-impenetrable shadow, its brick walls haphazardly crumbling and overgrown. There was no staircase, no ladder, no magical door. Only the smallest, yet brightest beam of sunlight pierced the chamber. What more could they do? There was only one way to walk, and it was into the unknown. The human steeled themselves for what lay beyond.

One second after they began walking, before they had even cleared the sizable flowerbed, the human flinched and froze. There was an impossibly loud sound above them. Not that it was deafening like an explosive, but that it was just impossible. It felt like it had come from all points in the room at once, winding its way to the top of the chamber and then some. And it sounded like this:

zap.

The human noticed the light above them was dimming the instant before you finished hurtling through the pit of Mt. Ebott at record speeds, crushing their fragile body like a twig. The flowers flattened, and the ground, already old and dusty from a lack of use, shattered entirely. The chamber cracked to its very foundations, shelves and pillars of rock cascading into a pile of rubble. The cacophony was unparalleled, reverberating — almost literally — across time and space. After an age of agony, the dust settled. Tiny motes of stone clinked across the cavern, tumbling into the shadow. The tumult echoed endlessly throughout the chamber, until it was finally drowned out by another sound, coming from within the makeshift tomb of walls. It sounded like a clock ticking in reverse.

Then there was multicolored light, and the rocks jettisoned apart from each other at lightning speed. The wind that merely howled before was like a supercell now, the air warring with itself to stir the chamber into unfathomable chaos. Your hand clawed out of the debris, and with a bit of effort, you climbed your way out. You stretched, blinking once. Then twice. Nothing became any clearer to you. Then you realized you didn’t have your glasses on. Ah.

With a wave of your hand, you summoned the wind. A pair of rectangular spectacles flew to your outstretched hand, and you promptly equipped them. No fanfare, no fuss, no pointless inventory allocations. Then you saw the hellish display before you: the half-ruined entryway, the trampled wilderness, the limitless rock, the unmoving hand of a child at the bottom of it all. And in the distance, summoned by the fracas — a pale gold flower, staring in complete disbelief. You gulp.

Your name is John Egbert, and you may have just killed a small child.


End file.
